This park was gazetted as a national park in 1890. It is world famous for its rugged terrain, geysers, waterfalls and century-old pine trees. It covers 1200 sq km and the “fire” waterfall of El Capitan is one of the most spectacular of all scenery.

Yosemite National Park

The spectacular view of the waterfall is created by the reflection of sunlight hitting the falling water at a specific angle. This rare sight can only be seen during a 2-week period towards the end of February. To photograph this rare event, photographers would often have to wait and endure years of patience in order to capture it. The reason is because its appearance depends on a few natural phenomena occurring at the same time, and luck.

First is the formation of the waterfall. The water is formed by the melting of snow and ice at the top of the mountain. It melts between the month of December and January and by the end of February there might not be much snow left to melt.

Second is the specific angle of the sun’s rays hitting the falling water. The sun’s position must be exactly at a particular spot in the sky. This occurs only in the month of February and during the short minutes of dusk. If it is a day full of clouds or something is obscuring the sun, you can only take pictures of your own sorry faces on the waterfall. It coincides with the fact that the weather in the National Park at that time of the year is often volatile and unpredictable. It compounds the difficulty of getting these pictures.

If you fancy a dip in this pool, you’ll need a head for heights – it’s 55 storeys up. But swimming to the edge won’t be quite as risky as it looks. While the water in the infinity pool seems to end in a sheer drop, it actually spills into a catchment area where it is pumped back into the main pool. At three times the length of an Olympic pool and 650ft up, it is the largest outdoor pool in the world at that height.

It features in the impressive, boat-shaped ‘SkyPark’ perched atop the three towers that make up the world’s most expensive hotel, the £4billion Marina Bay Sands development in Singapore.

A guest swims in the infinity pool of the Skypark - 55 storeys over the city of Singapore

Creeping closer inch by inch, 900 feet above the mighty Colorado River, the two sides of a $160 million bridge at the Hoover Dam slowly take shape. The bridge will carry a new section of US Route 93 past the bottleneck of the old road which can be seen twisting and winding around and across the dam itself.

When complete, it will provide a new link between the states of Nevada and Arizona. In an incredible feat of engineering, the road will be supported on the two massive concrete arches which jut out of the rock face.

The arches are made up of 53 individual sections each 24 feet long which have been cast on-site and are being lifted into place using an improvised high-wire crane strung between temporary steel pylons.

The arches will eventually measure more than 1,000 feet across. At the moment, the structure looks like a traditional suspension bridge. But once the arches are complete, the suspending cables on each side will be removed. Extra vertical columns will then be installed on the arches to carry the road.

The bridge has become known as the Hoover Dam bypass, although it is officially called the Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, after a former governor of Nevada and an American Football player from Arizona who joined the US Army and was killed in Afghanistan.

Hoover Dam By Pass

Work on the bridge started in 2005 and should finish next year. An estimated 17,000 cars and trucks will cross it every day.

The dam was started in 1931 and used enough concrete to build a road from New York to San Francisco . The stretch of water it created, Lake Mead , is 110 miles long and took six years to fill. The original road was opened at the same time as the famous dam in 1936.

An extra note: The top of the white band of rock in Lake Mead is the old waterline prior to the drought and development in the Las Vegas area. It is over 100 feet above the current water level.